Is there a certain synchronicity at work with Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush staging their big formal campaign openings just as Jurassic World oddly enjoys the biggest opening weekend of all time with its recycled plot (albeit with new bells and whistles) about the dangerous majesty of rampaging dinosaurs? It has to be.

Hillary Clinton's decision to hold the first major public rally of her campaign at Four Freedoms Park in New York City reminds us not only of the many challenges the United States has faced in the past, but also the many challenges we face today as we seek to build a better future for ourselves and for our children.

On January 6, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed a struggling nation. He described his vision for a country built on four essential freedoms. They are as true and essential today in this time of shaky economic recovery and shifting global political dynamics as they were more than 70 years ago.

There is almost nothing to which a person aspires that can be gained without compromise. The American people do not need to be made afraid of contrariness, or impassioned dissent, or of cooperation. That is a fear that will surely scuttle our democracy from within.

Most of us are probably familiar with Norman Rockwell's famous Thanksgiving painting. But few realize that it traces its inspiration to an address that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt made to Congress on January 6, 1941.

On a brilliant, bright sunny day in New York City, in the shadow of the United Nations building that Roosevelt worked so hard to create, I was moved by FDR's four freedoms. Four values which set good apart from evil.

Regardless of what Tuesday's debate results herald in its instantaneous wake, all Americans and those who admire us should take stock the morning after to recall the essential principles that have animated our nation's abiding purpose as the four freedoms at last summarize with lapidary precision.

We can't afford not to promote economic and social rights when constitutional courts, schools, and ordinary people protesting on the streets around the world are beginning to understand and apply them.